Thursday, August 7, 2025
Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi
Monday, July 21, 2025
Two Poets - Frank X Walker and Mosab Abu Toha
When I mentioned to coworker Michael - who was putting together a poetry exhibit at the library - that there were a couple of recently published books of poetry that I had found 'harrowing,' he raised an eyebrow at the word I used and suggested reviewing the books here.
It is an apt word for the poems in these two books. The poems, based on fact, are full of bitter tales of family separation and longing, loss and displacement, and scenes of annihilation of people and places. Coming to terms with the daily threat of death before you have barely had a chance to experience life is an overall theme in each book.
Poets Frank X Walker and Mosab Abu Toha are from ethnic groups whose people have been viewed throughout history as disposable, and while the contexts of these two poetry collections are different in place and time, the themes expressed have such strong parallels that it made sense to review them together. One collection is set in the context of the American Civil War and the other in present day Palestine.
Walker, a professor of English at the University of Kentucky and a former Poet Laureate of the state, has published 13 books of poetry. His poems often focus on specific historical events. His latest is called Load in Nine Times and draws on actual events while imagining the thoughts and emotions of Black Civil War soldiers and their families. These carefully composed poems give us a view of the horrors endured by men who eagerly signed up for soldiering in the Union army in exchange for the commonly understood expectation of emancipation from slavery for themselves and their wives and children.
Walker often does many months of research on a historic event before writing a poem about it, and several of the poems in Load in Nine Times imagine the thoughts of real people whose stories he found in archival records. The horrors described take time to emotionally digest, and these poems often left me feeling haunted. The two poems "Unsalted" and "How Salt Works" are about the 1864 massacre by Confederate soldiers at Saltville, Virginia of 46 Black soldiers who had been inadequately armed for battle and then abandoned on a muddy, freezing battlefield by order of their commander after they had been wounded. Other poems describe equally depraved behavior by commanding officers of both armies.
The poems reveal that like so much else in the American story, the military experience was much worse for Blacks than for white soldiers. And yet I was left with the impression that this terrible experience of going into battle with all its terrors and risk was still preferred to remaining enslaved. This series of poems provides such a close look at our gruesome history that the book felt a bit sacred to me once I had finished it; there is deep respect due to the people who suffered these experiences. At the back of the book, a timeline of Civil War developments and turning points plus several pages of notes discussing specific events that inspired some of the poems provide a helpful interpretive context.
Forest of Noise is a collection of poems by 32-year-old Palestinian writer Mosab Abu Toha. His poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and many other periodicals. He has won several prizes for his poetry. Like most Gazans, Toha has lost numerous family members, neighbors and lifelong friends who have been killed in the onslaught of retaliation by the Israeli Defense Forces in response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians. He, too, writes of bereavement, longing and unfathomable destruction of the people and community he has known all his life. So many people are missing from the world he knew that he writes of "Frying pans [that] miss the smell of olive oil. Clotheslines everywhere pine for soap scent," the doorknobs missing the touch of human hands and the ubiquitous rubble where the homes, olive and orange tree groves, and gathering spots of family and friends used to be. Like Walker, Toha brings you right into the immediacy of deep grief and it stings.
Here are some lines from his poem "Under the Rubble," which I first read in The New Yorker, before I knew who this poet was:
In Jabalia Camp, a mother collects her daughter's
Flesh in a piggy bank,
hoping to buy her a plot
on a river in a faraway land.
A group of mute people
were talking sign.
When a bomb fell,
they fell silent.
The scars on our children's faces
will look for you.
Our children's amputated legs
will run after you.
He left the house to buy some bread for his kids.
News of his death made it home,
but not the bread.
A father wakes up at night, sees
the random colors on the walls
drawn by his four-year-old daughter.
The colors are about four feet high.
Next year, they would be five.
But the painter has died
in an air strike.
There are no colors anymore.
There are no walls.
Where should people go? Should they
build a big ladder and go up?
But heaven has been blocked by the drones
and F-16s and the smoke of death.
...Even our souls,
they get stuck under the rubble for weeks.
These are important books at a time when American history is being suppressed, erased and deceptively revised, and when the people of Palestine are feeling abandoned by the whole world as the entire population of Gaza continues to be under relentless assault, and profiteers wait for a chance to redevelop the places Palestinians call home. These two collections of poems are treasures.
- Marianne W.
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
Eight young women gather in a bare-bones boxing gym in Reno, Nevada to compete for the title of best teen girl boxer in America. There are seven matches. During each match, we alternate between the minds of the two competing girls, slamming from one to the other, but also flitting into the minds of the viewers. Time isn't linear, either, and we get glimpses of their futures (without revealing the outcome of the match).
The energy is like heat coming off the page and I read this in a frenzied two days. Each character is specific and heart-breaking in their own way. Bullwinkel anchors them with phrases that repeat like a leitmotif, reminding you this is the character that never left her home town, this is the character who had a kid die while she was on duty as a lifeguard, this is the girl who has a "weird hat philosophy."
Bullwinkel's narrative is kinetic and she has a gift for describing what it is to be embodied. I had so much respect for the young women these characters represented: women who are dedicated to a craft, devoted to challenging themselves, regardless of whether or not they are being watched.
This was recommended on the New York Times book review podcast on the episode where they discuss the 100th anniversary of the publication of (my favorite novel) Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. The guests were asked to recommend books to read after the experimental stream-of-consciousness narrative of Mrs. Dalloway. Both books are currently on the shelf at our library. I encourage you to check them out!
-Michael G.
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Kiss of the Basilisk by Lindsay Straube
- review this book in a way that makes sense
- keep it somewhere around PG or PG-13
- not freak out my coworkers and our patrons by my reading choices.
Thursday, June 26, 2025
The Seep by Chana Porter
After an alien invasion solves the world's problems, Trina's wife wants a fresh start. Specifically, as a baby. She wants to become a literal baby (again).
Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi
The words reverberate through the entirety of this story as a lesson learned and a lesson shared.
A continuation of "Blood and Bone", "Virtue and Vengeance" follows Zélie, Amari, and Tzain as the tension of the war in Orïsha continues to rise. The king is now dead, but with the return of magic, there is now the new threat of tîtáns, people who are half kosidán half maji and wield uncontrollable power. The biggest threat of them all, is the queen.
The book continues with its signature shifts in perspective each chapter, continuing to follow Zélie, Amari, and Inan, each following their own beliefs in how they can end the war. As the title suggests, vengeance and grief are large themes in this book. We see the toll war takes on each one of the characters, and how that grief (or their attempts to prevent it) can motivate the characters to do actions that blur the lines of morality.
Family, community, and love. This book explores the lengths we're willing go to protect them.. and to avenge them. As I listened to this story, I was completely immersed in the world and invested in these characters. And now, I'm speeding through the third book! I highly encourage checking out this series, hoping that you will fall in love with it too, just like I have.
- Leo H.
Tuesday, June 3, 2025
Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum
In his final Oz book, Baum gives us enormous spiders, a mechanized sinking island led by a tween tyrant, and silent Mist Maidens. Each chapter of Baum's Oz books has been a fresh, light surprise. The stories are so easily entertaining, and definitely not without some thrills.
The edition I read came with an illuminating introduction and annotations by Jack Zipes, who puts things in context of the (much larger) whole of Baum's work, giving testament to the man's imagination and productivity.
Baum allowed the rules of Oz to change, but didn't forget to acknowledge that or make his characters reflect upon it. For example, the use of magic in Oz is strictly limited to the Supreme Ruler Ozma, the Sorceress Glinda, and later to the Wizard (who is brought back to Oz and favor after his flight in the first novel).
When Ozma learns that there are warring tribes in the North using magic, she and Dorothy journey to put an end to both offenses. However, once there, they find themselves trapped.
This is one of the central fascinations of Glinda: its focus on the limitations of ability and power. Even the Supreme Ruler can become stuck, not knowing how to escape a situation, and what's more, the most powerful Sorceress doesn't know how to save her. But with help, study, experimentation, patience, and a hopeful outlook (plus an unexpected coincidence), things can work out for the good.
-Michael G.
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley
People have a tendency to believe that they are immune to fascism. That it would happen abruptly, and we will suddenly find ourselves living in World War II times. On the contrary, it is subtle, with systems changing right before our eyes at a slow and steady pace. That is, until the fascist regime does such a horrendous act that it affects everyone--you--in a way that cannot be ignored. In this book, Stanley discusses what he believes are the ten components of fascism that facilitate these subtle changes by analyzing the commonalities between fascist regimes, their rulers, and their evolutions over time.
Monday, May 12, 2025
The Most by Jessica Anthony
This 2024 novel is a quickly and easily read fiction piece that might be considered a novella. There is nothing excessive in this 133-page, richly told story. Every informative word seems carefully chosen and assembled with an almost poetic quality. I was drawn by its cover descriptions including: "The Most charges the air like a thunderclap," and "a novel of ruthless beauty." The title refers to a tennis maneuver, the relevance of which is a key part of the story.
It's set in the mid-century. Virgil and Kathleen Beckett are just out of a New England university and newly married (a commitment perhaps made too soon). There is solid affection between them but each has secrets, each makes mistakes, and neither is emotionally mature enough to resist committing numerous indiscretions in the early years of their marriage, that each keeps hidden from the other. Virgil married for love; Kathleen more for convenience. Therefore she has the upper hand in some ways. But like so many women of that era, she did not get from marriage what she thought she had bargained for.
As a character, Kathleen could have been drafted from the societal issues explored in Betty Friedan's 1963 classic The Feminine Mystique: A woman driven slightly mad on occasion by the social and professional limitations of her life. Her disturbance is expressed now and then by just-so-slightly erratic behavior. The author connects the dots of Kathleen's life to explain an episodic behavioral deviance that sometimes embarrasses and exasperates the seemingly conventional husband who otherwise adores and deeply admires her.
Oddly, in an era of post-war prosperity in the United States, these two university-educated people seem held back from achieving the economic promise of their time. In their mid-30s, they don't have much to show for their comparatively privileged positions in the world. Former college tennis champion Kathleen has a more ambitious, driven character than her laid-back husband, but in the cultural and economic milieu of that era there is little she can do to improve the sometimes depressingly dingy conditions in which she, Virgil, and their two young sons live.
This is the intriguing part: within this story's framework there is something sinister lurking between the lines. This marriage feels like a sham. Neither Kathleen nor Virgil has completely shaken off the reverberations of their past indiscretions. It feels all along as if the chickens of husband and wife are going to come home to roost in some terrible way that destroys everybody. And yet, at the end, the tables turn. The chickens do come home - all of them, yet the conclusion is not the explosion you expect, but something else entirely. It leaves you hanging a little bit, wanting to know more, and to learn the next chapter for this conventional-appearing, complicated couple.
The Most is now in the FMPL collection.
- Marianne W.
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
Hanna and Suzette are at odds, jealous over each other's relationship to Alex. Hanna decides the only feasible outcome is to eliminate the competition. Their story unfolds in alternating chapters, building to a fiery Walpurgisnacht and its sputtering aftermath.
Hanna is seven and Suzette and Alex are her parents.
It's a pretty wildly uneven book and to be honest, I hated it most of the time. Suzette and Alex are so bland and self-absorbed I couldn't tell if they were intentionally satirical or not. Suzette's main characteristics are obsessive cleaning and Crohn's Disease and really, mainly Crohn's Disease. It is a surprise just how much Crohn's Disease can define a character. Alex is Hot Swedish Gym Daddy. Too much of the tension relied on will Suzette be smart enough to record her daughter's bizarre outbursts? And will Alex ever stop explosively and irrationally defending his "lilla gumman"?
All of this would be slightly more bearable if Hanna were an entertaining, well-written, compelling character. But there's hardly consistency with her voice: She has an adult's intelligence and vocabulary but occasionally uses babytalk and is astoundingly stupid. I thought the book might at least be silly and fun after Hanna punches a toddler at Trader Joe's, but it doesn't get fun for a long time after that. Hanna pretends to be possessed by a witch, makes a heinous collage, and incites a special needs boy to bash his head against a wall and Alex still won't acknowledge all is not right in their sunlit eco-friendly dream home.
What will be the limit? Maybe I'll leave that to you to discover if you decide to give it a go. I will say, the ending held a surprise for me that I enjoyed but didn't make the overall reading experience much better.
For a more claustrophobic and horrifying story that has similar themes, I recommend The Push by Audrey Audrain.
- Michael G.
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Togetha by Keith F. Miller Jr
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
The Wolf Man by Philip J. Reed
I am so excited about a small Missouri press called DieDie Books! Currently they offer four titles (with one upcoming) that are each a deep-dive into one horror movie by a single author.
I love that concept. I love to hear or read someone who is passionate about something (especially books and movies!). And these books are very pretty white-and-black volumes with original cover artwork. The one that I was drawn to was The Wolf Man, the movie which strikes me as the sensitive boy's favorite of the Universal Studios monsters.
The werewolf as a monster is rich with symbolism, but Reed helped me see that the appeal of this movie has a lot to do with Lon Chaney, Jr. as the awkward, doomed main character Larry Talbot. He has zero chemistry with the lead actress Evelyn Ankers and a complex relationship with his estranged father. They are bound by love but find each other impossible to understand. Larry can never match his father's hopes and expectations or integrate into his society.
Reed absolutely loves the tension between the script and what the actors bring to life (for example, with any other cast Ankers would be playing his love interest), all centered around the tragic, doomed lead actor. Reed sees so much pathos in Lon Chaney, Jr. and this book is actually more of a deeply felt meditation on the man through the lens of The Wolf Man.
It's so raw and emotional, in fact, I was sometimes taken aback, a little embarrassed. That feeling made so much sense when I got to the afterward and read that Reed died by suicide before finishing the final edits. Those gaps in polish -- a repeated phrase here, pages of obsessively repetitive sentence structure (like that bird that got into the Library the other weekend, bashing itself against the glass, sensing what it needed but unable to reach it), were evidence of a man becoming undone. And so this book is a portrait of existential despair through the prism of Lon Chaney, Jr, through the reflection of The Wolf Man.
It's heavy, amazing, intense.
-Michael G.
Friday, April 18, 2025
Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
Monday, April 7, 2025
Down to the Bone: A Leukemia Story by Catherine Pioli
I started this beautifully self-illustrated book thinking that if I had to be treated for cancer - and I have been, which is one reason I was drawn to the book - I wouldn't mind doing so in Paris, as if somehow the seductive ambiance of that city would make the illness and its poisonous treatments easier to bear and the clinical aspects all so much more interesting in that location and language. I shortly gave up that idea, as the author's experience (while featuring some of the same medicines and treatments prescribed to me) was altogether much more grueling than my own. That was not due to the French healthcare system, or the location, but because of the type of cancer she had.
Catherine Pioli's active, idyllic childhood in Greece gave her a belief that she would always be blessed with good health. But after developing a debilitating, painful and puzzling constellation of symptoms at age 32 she had a series of medical consultations that went nowhere definitive. Feeling worse week by week, she endured torturous tests some of which required weeks as a hospital inpatient before the diagnosis of leukemia was made. The treatment for it was even more grueling than the miserable-sounding tests.
As a young adult establishing herself as a professional illustrator in Paris with regular deadlines to meet, all of this was a huge, very inconvenient, anxiety-causing disruption. A personal life full of love from family, a devoted partner, and friends help her get through it, but we watch her life spiral downward while the beloved people in her life experience happy events in their own lives. Remarkably, she used her talent and skill to document her experience, fears and emotions as they unfolded despite treatment side effects including malnutrition, exhaustion and progressive loss of weight and stamina. The result is a record composed of exquisitely detailed drawings and explanations of the medical necessity of each test and treatment, with the love of others and the aforementioned Paris ambiance woven into her bittersweet tale.
If you have read Jon Batiste's wife Suleika Jaouad's memoir of her own experience of leukemia, (Between Two Kingdoms) this is a similar story except for the respective authors' personal details. I loved Jaouad's book and found Catherine Pioli's graphic account of the same illness equally captivating and worth my reading time. Both writers tell their stories so compellingly. Pioli's format and comparatively more circumscribed telling make for a quicker reading experience and engage the reader in a completely different but equally unforgettable way. Moreover, it's an informative lesson in some of the ways of cancer - and medicine.
One doesn't have to have experienced cancer to be drawn into the story of this artist whose life rapidly turned upside down and forced her down a different path than she expected in her thirties. This is an extremely moving and powerful account, the outcome of which you'll have to read the book to learn.
-Marianne W.
Thursday, April 3, 2025
The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Last night, right before the tornado sirens went off, Leo and I were at the circulation desk joking about him being whisked off to Oz.
"But would you come back?" I asked him, because that's the thing about The Wizard of Oz that always troubled me. Why, when Oz is so wonderful, would Dorothy choose to return to dusty old sepia-toned Kansas?
Because of Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. But in The Emerald City of Oz, which Baum intended to be his final Oz book (it wasn't), their farm is in foreclosure and Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are about to be homeless. Things are looking dire.
Thankfully, Dorothy's generosity, honesty, and courage has made her friends in high places, and the ruler of Oz relocates the trio to Oz. I loved this, and enjoyed Henry and Em's reactions to the weird and silly Oz (especially the mutual animosity between Aunt Em and the Yellow Hen Billina). Dorothy takes them on a tour of Oz, encountering many strange creatures, my favorite adventure being the visit to the edible village of Bunbury that ends in absolute disaster when Toto devours several citizens and Billina pecks the raisin eye out of another. Dorothy shows sauce but leaves meekly when threatened with "the ovens."
Meanwhile, various frightening monster tribes amass outside of Oz with bloodthirsty plans to pillage and enslave. The Whimsies with their huge fake heads sound creepy, but somehow their illustration by John R. Neill is even scarier. His illustrations haunt the pages, often difficult to make out, crowded with maniacal figures that evoke the thrills and strangeness of Oz.
It was funny, sweet, and even a little exciting. If you need a break from this reality, I recommend this escape to the utopia of Oz.
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
- Leo H
Monday, March 10, 2025
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra
A woman is awake in the middle of the night. It is just her and her children in their home. She hears a thud. She knows every creak of every board and that sound came from where a tall person would bump their head coming up the stairs if they don't know the house well. They aren't alone.
Nightwatching is the stuff of nightmares, and the first 150 pages are incredibly taut with suspense. Sierra alternates between short chapters of present tense and flashback, and I never felt that the flashback sequences detracted from the plot. Chapter by chapter, she is building a story not just of a home invasion, but what it is like to be a woman not believed.
Then the narrative really sinks into that theme, to a degree that slows down the plot and my interest wavered. It became repetitive. The final third of the book picks up in action, delivering a climax the reader wants.
It is a very neatly constructed thriller, worth it for the first 150 pages alone. I read it in just a couple of sittings over the course of two days.
- Michael G.
Saturday, January 25, 2025
Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
In folk horror, you usually have a naive outsider, like Ned Constantine and his family in Harvest Home, entering a rural setting and encountering the superstitions of the people that live in that isolated place. It's usually a beautiful setting, with a strong sense of community and tradition. What seem like remnants of a bygone era, like folk songs, dances, and symbols, are seen as eccentric. And there's a comforting draw to all of this, at first. Isn't it nice, isn't it quaint, isn't it good to be so connected to nature? Yes, the nearest hospital is pretty far, but Widow Fortune seems to have an herbal remedy for anything that ails ya (including asthma). It seems like a good place to bring up your children. Fresh air! Horseback riding! Polite youngsters who value hard work! Hallucinogenic mead!? Secret rituals in the woods!?!
But if you don't fully respect the old ways, look out! Dread builds as conflict increases between modernity and the surviving pagan practices. What you thought was dead and gone is actually alive and well, and it is not going anywhere.
-Michael G.